Tag: CV

I get asked occasionally whether it’s better to put CV or Curriculum Vitae on a CV, and I always tell people that it doesn’t really matter, just so long as you spell it correctly! Lately I’ve seen a lot of CVs that don’t have either on them. This is a simple mistake to make, and you might think it doesn’t matter as it’s perfectly obvious what it is, but it…

I’ve reviewed a CV today that I gave a pretty low score of only 44/100, and the only reason it scored this well was that it was under 2 pages and fulfilled some of the basic section requirements of a CV. The client rang me to talk through the review and I was genuinely shocked when she told me that she had paid £150 for it to be written by…

I see a lot of CVs (several dozen a week) and very few score more than about 60/100 in our free reviews and there is a common thread to the mistakes – 1/ It doesn’t say it’s a CV! Blindingly obvious but so many people forget to put CV or Curriculum Vitae at the top of their CV. This may seem trivial but it’s supposed to be a professional document…

More and more people are registering with LinkedIn and that’s because it is a great networking tool, but should you put it on your CV? No, is the simple answer. This goes back to the most basic (and often forgotten) piece of advice on CVs, which is that you must always remember that a CV is to get you an interview. The 3 reasons not to put LinkedIn on your…

Most CVs ignore this very simple point and it’s why recruiters will contact you about jobs that you’re not remotely interested in. Recruiters will frequently have found your CV on an on-line database such as Reed or Indeed and think you look suitable for a job role they’re working on. This is based on what you’re doing right now or possibly on your previous job role. However, you may well be…

This is an area of a CV that is very easy to get wrong and the vast majority of CVs that we see contain some basic errors when describing job roles. The area I’ll cover in this post is the Header. The Header: You need to put yourself in the recruiter or employers shoes and consider what they’re looking for in order of importance. As an example of this lets…

Honesty is the best policy. Unless we happen to be talking about CVs and resumes, it seems. In 2014, 63% of all the confirmed employment frauds reported to Cifas, the UK’s fraud prevention service, involved people lying about their education, former employment or qualifications. This has serious consequences for employees and employers alike. But checking the veracity of all claims made on CVs is time-consuming, costly and difficult. Can technology…

When I review a CV this is the first issue that I look at, as it is an immediate determination of how good the CV is going to be regardless of content or style. Too long and it won’t get read, too short and the recruiter is left wondering where the rest of the CV got to! I’ve always maintained that 2 pages is ideal but that going into a…